The top ten schools in several categories are front and center in the USN report. There is other good performance outside the upper extreme, such as one school I found in a large Floridian city: 96% graduation rate; 64.4% college readiness; 84% AP participation with 69% success; and 71% reading and 66% math proficiency.

That school ranks 29th among all Florida schools and 343rd in the nation. However, this “best” school still graduates 96% of students when 29% are not reading at the level and 34% have trouble with arithmetic. It makes one wonder. It should make one suspicious.

Then, there are the “worst” schools. I skewered them recently in a related article. Please pardon any caustic effect therein. The worst offender districts spend more money than the average while delivering single-digit proficiency results. I think it’s safe to say “fraud” again.

The situation, the fraud is much worse than just poor test results. The whole basis and structure of the public schools in this country is so out of touch with American values that placing children in many or most of our schools is tantamount to child abuse. Seriously. The American model, in many states, is built on the fraud and historic bigotry of Blaine Amendment meddling. A beginning based on hating Catholics. Then, segregation and the hampering of black achievement. Next, integration, both of students and of plans to lower expectations and results. No free thinking citizens produced, just barely competent and obedient worker drone units. That was then. Now, the schools have become prisons.

I’ve been to more than a few schools recently. And I’ve been in more jails and prisons (on professional business…) than the average. There really is little difference. To convert a prison into a school, just add some desks. To make a school into a literal prison, just add bars to the windows. Beyond the physical similarities, there is congruence in the treatment of the inmates. And, in many places, the students literally have fewer rights, less freedom that prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Click here, read, and think about the application of these principles to your child’s school: Basic Rules and Protocols. In addition to suspicious, you should now be getting angry.

Other countries in Europe are quietly doing the same thing even as Americans gain more weight and more tattoos.

These things are all interrelated, thanks to the never-ending gifts of globalism. Ready or not, war and financial crisis are coming to the West. Stefan Molyneux and Peter Schiff discussed part of that and more yesterday:

Stefan M.

Watch that, all of it. They discuss the coming crash, the debt, the stupidity, the end of retirement, immigration (both ways), and the near-certainty of full-fledged socialism in America. If you’re on your game, then you can answer the riddle as to why those evil men like GoodFIEND want negative interest rates, even in a time when central banksters are saying things are great and rates should rise a bit. If not, then I suggest maybe another highly respected web log might be more to your liking. Maybe not to read but just one with a bunch of cat pictures. Cats with tattoos. Obese cats with tattoos…

Today Stefan talked to Joseph M. Humire about that socialist disaster in Venezuela (watch that). If you’ve been following along at FP the past year or so, then you know that’s a pet subject and a microcosm of what American’s can look forward to. Turns out there is more to that tragedy than even I knew.

I was going to make a video about all this but what you see here is probably as close to a synthesis as I’ll come for now.

Solutions? Well, you had that lovely election the other day so everything should be fine, right? You took my advice and wisely elected Ron Paul President in 2008, remember? Or not. Schiff is probably right. Barring some great 27-D chess move by the Trump, the suffering masses will be penalized with even more of the same insanity that created these deep problems in the first place.

I have other real solutions (two really) which I will hold tight for the time being. Three predictions as well.

PS: another great column at TPC is coming along any hour now. That, then, here.

Newspapers are dying. You could probably guess as much just by picking one up. Even the Sunday editions have shrunk to nearly nothing. The ads can be thicker than the news sections.

The US has, as of 2017, 53 metro areas with populations exceeding 1million. 107 exceed 500,000. Yet, the US only has three (3) daily papers with circulations which exceed 1 million. Only 7 exceed 500,000 subscribers (4 are based in NYC).

“They’re not reinvesting in the business,” Ken Doctor, a longtime newspaper analyst and president of the website Newsonomics, said about Alden Global. “It’s dying and they are going to make every dollar they can on the way down.”

Several hedge funds have become newspaper barons in recent years. Alden Global now owns about 60 daily newspapers through a subsidiary, Digital First Media. New Media Investment Group, which is managed and controlled by private-equity firm Fortress, owns almost 150 newspapers in smaller towns like Columbus, Ohio, and Providence, Rhode Island, through a unit, GateHouse Media. And hedge fund Chatham Asset Management LLC is one of the largest shareholders and bondholders in McClatchy Co., publisher of the Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald.

(Continued below)

There are several ways to look at this:

First, you’re reading this on a computer. This site, a highly respected web log, is admittedly an Op-Ed operation. And, it’s small. I have neither the time, money, or interest in running full-time news here. The upside is that no globalist corporation controls anything here. Right now, one such company is trying to slow down my distribution. I’m not sure how the coming harsh EU regulations are going to affect their operations in America but it can’t hurt whatever comes. The other upside is that all the news sites in the world are just a few clicks away.

Second, and this is very cynical, given the literacy trends in the US, the papers may not have enough readers to subscribe to anything. That, I think (hope) will reverse. Tomorrow I start a 2-part series on that subject at TPC. You’ll see a link here.

Lastly, I think two types of print papers will survive, thrive maybe. The first group consists of the big three – WSJ, NYT, and USAToday. Maybe a few more regionals. They already deliver copy while running healthy, national websites too. I look for it to continue. And, for those of you at the base, local level, rejoice. I think a few small, local niche papers might make it, concentrating hard on what the locals expect out of whatever nuanced interest.

Come what may, I’ll be here until such time as the call of the mountains becomes irresistible.

In the interests of honesty and reality, the man should change his name to GoodFIEND. He seriously advocates robbing the people of their money and forcing them into servitude to the criminal banksters. He’s also nominated by the Trump to the Federal Reserve Syndicate.

Trump Federal Reserve Board of Governors nominee Marvin Goodfriend reportedly advocated on two different occasions the elimination of cash from circulation in an effort to prevent individuals from hoarding cash in the event that the Federal Reserve were to push a negative interest rate policy during a financial crisis.

The Mises Institute notes that Goodfriend first floated the idea in a 1999 paper called “The Case for Unencumbering Interest Rate Policy at the Zero Bound” and again promoted the concept at a 2016 Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Goodfriend reportedly said that the Fed needs the option to push interest rates negative, which would cause consumers to pay fees in order to keep their money in savings accounts, and that cash should be eliminated to prevent banking consumers from pulling their money out of banks to avoid paying those fees.

Bloomberg notes that Goodfriend suggested a few theories for how to phase out cash. He floated eliminating large bills to make cash less convenient. He suggested that the Fed charge banks and/or consumers fees for issuing paper currency. He advocated that the issuance of cash be taxed such that consumers only receive 90 cents when withdrawing a dollar. He also called for abolishing cash outright. The Wall Street Journal notes that Goodfriend additionally suggested that cash bills should contain a magnetic strip so they can be scanned and tracked as they move through circulation.

Word has it he will even graciously allow singing in the fields.

I really like Donald Trump. I like the idea of America, America first even. I like my swamps drained. But I wonder sometimes why a man, nominally at war with the NWO, keeps nominating one swamp rat after another. We shall write this off as 19-D chess or whatnot.

Anyway, the criminal banksters have already achieved real negative interest rates. That barrier proved just as easily broken as the one associated with 767.3 MPH. It’s a convenient mechanism to boost the already steady supply of funny money. Here’s, in brief, how it works:

Congress authorizes debt spending, money created from nothing. The Fed digitally prints even more fake currency. They loan that surplus crap to the commercial banking criminals at a negative interest rate, adding even more fiat elasticity. The big banks loan it to smaller banks, funds, and credit companies at a flat or marginal rate. The smaller bank deals with a credit card bank at friendly, discount terms. (All along the way, money is passed with either little cost, no cost, or an actual bonus). The credit card bank kindly loans you the fake money – at 19% interest. You have to pay that back, via the sacrifice of part of your life and livelihood. You are literally the only party in the chain that has to contribute something real to the cycle.

That’s the loan side of negative rates. For savers, it means that the bank that holds your money no longer has to pay you anything for the privilege of the holding and use of your hard-earned cash. In fact, under this plan, you will have to pay them a fee to keep your cash. You will have no choice in the matter. This is also known as robbery.

This plan, when (when not if) implemented, will be sold to the gullible public as a measure of safety and convenience. Something about fighting terrorists or feeding whales or feeding whales to terrorists or anything else they think 95 IQ teevee watchers will fall for.

What this all amounts to is a desperate scramble by the globalist elites to grab just a little more real wealth and control as their new hellish world heads south. This is kind of what the Pope was eluding to the other day, in flowery, economically vacuous terms. These wise, central planners are literally planning to force the people into conditions to shock a Roman peasant. The people, by and very large, for their part, pop pills, eat a lot of sugar, and contemplate new tattoos. Not all of them.

Today, millions of Americans are headed to the polls to make their voices heard, make their votes count. Rest assured that whichever Uniparty dipshit you endorse today, he is deeply educated about this brewing danger and surely has a ready plan to combat it.

(Hang on a second. I laughed myself off my chair).

Okay, seriously, there is a solution to problems like this. Honest solutions. Appropriate solutions.

All of these schemes, these dread issues of modernity – the banking fraud, the debt, the hands-free laws, the pitiful schools, the “refugees,” the rancor, the violence – all of it is connected. People elsewhere are slowly waking up. The Italians will probably leave the EU within a year. The Swiss and the Swedes are preparing for war. The Hungarians and the Polls are firmly saying, “No!” to more globalist “help.” Will you, the Trump, and the rest of the US join them?

The Vatican recently released a report on “the present economic-financial system” of the world that is typical of all pronouncements about economics from the Catholic Church bureaucracy: It is astoundingly ignorant of even elementary economic concepts, and is written in the language of a C-/D+ high school writing assignment. There is confusion over the definition of very simple economic concepts like profit and GDP. There are 49 footnotes, but none of them makes reference to any economic literature. They are mostly speeches by Catholic clergy who don’t seem to have much knowledge at all of the subject they are pontificating about.

Entitled “Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones”, the report expresses alarm about “the growing influence of financial markets on the material well-being of most of humankind” and urges more government intervention, more regulation, more politics, more welfarism, more central planning, more taxes, and less freedom. As I said, it is typical of all such pronouncements about “Catholic social teaching” in the area of economics.

The first assumption the report makes is that there are no ethical guidelines in markets. The report then declares that the economy “needs ethics in order to function correctly.” And the kind of ethics needs to be “people-centred (sic),” says the Vatican. Well, yah. Is there any other kind of ethics other than human-centered? Robot-centered?? Does no one in the business world have any ethical guidelines, as the Vatican asserts?

There are almost too many straw-man arguments in the Vatican report to count. One of the first ones is the contention that in “our contemporary age” the “human person” is understood “individualistically,” which is assumed to be an immoral thing. Worse yet, he is viewed “predominantly as a consumer, whose “profit” consists only in “the optimization of his or her income.” There may be a few people who judge others according to the size of their bank accounts, but to claim that this is a pervasive characteristic of “our contemporary age” is absurd. Even mainstream economics models consumers as “utility” maximizers, not income maximizers.

One would think the Catholic Church would support the classical liberal philosophy of individualism, defined by F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom as simply respect for the individual – all individuals – and rejection of the notion that individuals should become pawns or slaves of government authorities. But no, as a collection of hardened collectivists and Marxist ideologues the Vatican denounces individualism.

He is (rightly) a little harsher and more technical in his critique than I was in my initial report. I’m still pleased the Church called, in summation, for individual awareness and action regarding these matters. The awareness starts with real understanding. That’s why I called for a professional assessment. We have it now. All good and well in the sancto-economic world.

A Cambridge professor with deep ties to American and British intelligence has been outed as an agent who snooped on the Trump presidential campaign for the FBI.

Multiple media outlets have named Stefan Halper, 73, as the secret informant who met with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos starting in the summer of 2016. The American-born academic previously served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.

Here is your collusion. Halper has a 38-year history of political espionage, having played the same game for the CIA in 1980. That case was against Carter and for the GOP. The 2016 work was against Trump and seemingly for the DNC. They call it the Uniparty for a reason. Vote “D” or “R” as you like but the machine wins every time.

Unless this time is different. The Trump Tweeted (always with a Tweet):

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

I don’t know what good having the FBI investigate crimes possibly committed by the FBI will accomplish. A fox will certainly guard the fox house. Of course, it might be a good sorting step before moving into Lincoln-Clinton-Bush-Obama “legal” territory. This all assumes much: 1) that Trump is a swamp plumber; 2) that the government is redeemable; 3) that anyone cares.

He hits hard on the mindless boilerplate calls for more gun control. No “AR-47” or “fully automatic assault clips” to blame here. And Crazy Uncle Joe Biden did tell everyone to get a shotgun… Anyone called for #pressurecookercontrol or #pipecontrol? No.

He notes the media lies about “a school shooting every week” and dismantles accordingly. BTW, according to the CDC, while you watched his video, about 72 lives were saved in the US by guns.

He notes something else I had noticed: the MSM communists keep talking about the iron cross pin but stay conspicuously silent about their paraphernalia (hammer and sickle, Baphomet, etc.). No one, that I’m aware of, has mentioned the LGBT+ rainbow heart pin this overweight, smelly, atheist loser was sporting. Interesting.

This kind of examination is unheard of in the media, radical if you will. Stefan’s solution is radical too: charging the parents. Something to consider if one can get away from blaming the NRA.

My solution is even more radical. It also addresses societal problems beyond the violence. If you want to abolish school shootings, then abolish the schools. Abolish. Public. Schools. Or convert them to something that works, something decentralized. Homeschoolers do not have these problems at all. And they don’t suffer the embarrassing statistics I mentioned yesterday: a 92% graduation rate with only 39% proficiency in English and 28% proficiency in math (at the subject TX school, which is about the US average).

I’m probably going to cover this in a video asap. For now, this is the best I’ve seen. All things to think about, if you’re into thinking.

In a sweeping critique of global finance released by the Vatican on Thursday, the Holy See singled out derivatives including credit-default swaps for particular scorn. “A ticking time bomb,” the Vatican called them. The unusual rebuke — derivatives rarely reach the level of religious doctrine — is in keeping with Francis’s skeptical view of unbridled global capitalism.

The unbridled part is certainly correct. But, this is not capitalism – there’s no capital involved. By shady definition, these bombs are literally gambling bets based on the 100% fake “currency” gifted us by the governments and the banksters. Will Dr. Steve Keen please report to Rome?

The concern is legitimate and warranted. The overall gist of the message is that, to honor God, and to be free, there must be a level of morality in the financial systems and the economy in general. All good and well.

An enduring call to acknowledge the human quality of generosity comes from the rule formulated by Jesus in the Gospel, called the golden rule, which invites us to do to others what we would like them to do for us (cf. Mt 7, 12; Lk 6, 31).

12. Economic activity cannot be sustained in the long run where freedom of initiative cannot thrive.[23] It is also obvious today that the freedom enjoyed by the economic stakeholders, if it is understood as absolute in itself, and removed from its intrinsic reference to the true and the good, creates centers of power that incline towards forms of oligarchy and in the end undermine the very efficiency of the economic system.[24]

From this point of view, it is easy to see how, with the growing and all-pervasive control of powerful parties and vast economic-financial networks, those deputed to exercise political power are often disoriented and rendered powerless by supranational agents and by the volatility of the capital they manage. Those entrusted with political authority find it difficult to fulfil to their original vocation as servants of the common good, and are even transformed into ancillary instruments of interests extraneous to the good.[25]

These factors make all the more imperative a renewed alliance between economic and political agents in order to promote everything that serves the complete development of every human person as well as the society at large and unites demands for solidarity with those of subsidiarity.[26]

This seems a little late as the powerful stakeholders and their co-conspirators in the governments have long since abandoned anything approaching decency, morality, or concern for the common good. It’s almost funny: the US had a law banning sports gambling yet has always allowed derivatives betting, which is nothing more than a private-party extension of the crimes of central banking fiat.

So much the Pope gets right:

What was sadly predicted a century ago has now come true today. Capital annuity can trap and supplant the income from work, which is often confined to the margins of the principal interests of the economic system. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a “good” for the human person[30] and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations.

That means, as the wheels of global fake-finance turn, the funny money drowns out the real value of actual capital and labor; real working people are reduced to serfs. Gresham’s Law at insidious work – bad money driving out good. It was directly, correctly predicted 100 years ago, echoed constantly ever since, but it has been an observable trend and phenomenon for millennia.

I was afraid the Letter would degenerate into a call for more central planning and regulation – the same things that created the issue, to begin with. The sell is in there but it is soft. Rather, I was pleased with the conclusion, the call to action of free individuals:

IV. Conclusion

34. In front of the massiveness and pervasiveness of today’s economic-financial systems, we could be tempted to abandon ourselves to cynicism, and to think that with our poor forces we can do very little. In reality, every one of us can do so much, especially if one does not remain alone.

Numerous associations emerging from civil society represent in this sense a reservoir of consciousness, and social responsibility, of which we cannot do without. Today as never before we are all called, as sentinels, to watch over genuine life and to make ourselves catalysts of a new social behavior, shaping our actions to the search for the common good, and establishing it on the sound principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

Every gesture of our liberty, even if it appears fragile and insignificant, if it is really directed towards the authentic good, rests on Him who is the good Lord of history and becomes part of a buoyancy that exceeds our poor forces, uniting indissolubly all the actions of good will in a web that unites heaven and earth, which is a true instrument of the humanization of each person, and the world as a whole. This is all that we need for living well and for nourishing a hope that may be at the height of our dignity as human persons.

The Church, Mother and Teacher, aware of having received in gift an undeserved deposit, offers to the men and women of all times the resources for a dependable hope. Mary, Mother of God made man for us, may take our hearts in hand and guide them in the wise building of that good that her Son Jesus, through his humanity made new by the Holy Spirit, has come to inaugurate for the salvation of the world.

Know and understand these money troubles. Don’t be alone. Join us in the reservoir of consciousness trending towards freedom.

It’s not just gun violence, Pocahontas. The Greek-surnamed suspect allegedly utilized pipe bombs too. If these vultures want to stop bomb violence, then they should outlaw bombs. May I suggest some language to cover what could be considered a bomb:

The term “destructive device” means (1) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas (A) bomb, (B) grenade, (C) rocket having a propellent charge of more than four ounces, (D) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, (E) mine, or (F) similar device; (2) any type of weapon by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel or barrels of which have a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, except a shotgun or shotgun shell which the Secretary finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes; and (3) any combination of parts either designed or intended for use in converting any device into a destructive device as defined in subparagraphs (1) and (2) and from which a destructive device may be readily assembled. The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon; any device, although originally designed for use as a weapon, which is redesigned for use as a signaling, pyrotechnic, line throwing, safety, or similar device; surplus ordnance sold, loaned, or given by the Secretary of the Army pursuant to the provisions of section 4684(2), 4685, or 4686 of title 10 of the United States Code; or any other device which the Secretary finds is not likely to be used as a weapon, or is an antique or is a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting purposes.